Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Computing devices such as personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, cellular phones, and countless other types of Internet-capable devices are increasingly prevalent in numerous aspects of modern life. As computers become progressively more integrated with users' every day life, the convenience, efficiency, and intuitiveness of the user-interfaces by which users interact with computing devices becomes progressively more important.
A user-interface may include combinations of hardware and software that enable the user to, among other things, interact with a computing system. One example of a modern user-interface is a “pointing device” that may allow a user to input spatial data into a computing system. The spatial data may be received and processed by the computing system, and may ultimately be used by the computing system as a basis for executing certain computing functions.
One type of pointing device may, generally, be based on a user touching a surface. Examples of common such pointing devices include a touch-based interface, which may include a TouchPad and a touch screen. Other examples of pointing devices based on a user touching a surface may exist as well. In some arrangements, the surface is a flat surface that can detect contact with the user's finger. For example, the surface may include electrode-sensors, capacitive sensors, resistive sensors, and/or other sensors that are arranged to transmit, to the computing system, data that indicated the pressure and direction of movement of the finger on the surface.
The computing system may be equipped with a graphical display that may, for example, provide a visual depiction of a graphical pointer that moves in accordance with the movement of the pointer. The graphical display may also provide a visual depiction of other objects that the user may manipulate, including, for example, a visual depiction of a graphical user-interface. The user may refer to such a graphical user-interface with inputting data. Implementations of a TouchPad may involve a graphical display that is physically remote from the TouchPad. However, a touchscreen is typically characterized by a TouchPad embedded into a graphical display such that users may interact directly with a visual depiction of the graphical user-interface, and/or other elements displayed on the graphical display, by touching the graphical display itself.
Often, a TouchPad may be outside of the user's line of vision. For example, the TouchPad may be attached to an HMD in a position that is not parallel with the graphical display of the HMD. Thus, directional ambiguity may occur between user inputs and corresponding manipulations of a graphical interface provided via the graphical display of the HMD. That is, it may not be clear whether touch-input movements on the TouchPad (e.g., those in a forward/backward direction) are intended to represent interactions with the graphical interface to the left, or to the right (or in some other direction). Such directional ambiguity may result in poor user experience. Thus, an improvement to help resolve such directional ambiguity is desired.